For years I've heard about the book, "Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers," by Kriegel and Brandt, that came out in 1996.  It could be easy for me to pass it off as an out-moded idea.  After all, that was 13 years ago!  Or, I could get that the essence of their message is that every organization (yes, even yours) is attached to ways of doing things that no longer serve the best interests of the company.  What underlies "the way we do things around here" is a set of assumptions and those assumptions drive our behaviors without our even being aware of it.  This also happens on an individual and personal leve, but as a friend of mine says, "That's another show for Oprah.

The authors' definition of a Sacred Cow as related to business is, "An outmoded belief, assumption, practice, policy, system, or startegy, generally invisible, tht inhibits change and prevents responsiveness to new opportunities."

A couple weeks ago one of my clients, a financial planner & investment advisor, guided his leadership team through the process of identifying their Sacred Cows and here's what he reported back to me.  "We found that just about everything we do is a Sacred Cow!"  Some of those underlying assumptions included: 

• We need to at least offer a plan update annually to every client.
• Every client gets an individually customized investment portfolio.
• We need to educate all of our clients on everything.

They are just at the beginning of this process and already see that by making just one or two key changes - supported by new underlying assumptions - they can regain about 9% of their professional time.  This could be the time for you to begin to uncover your Sacred Cows.